The present invention relates to the network management of local and wide area networks. Specifically, a system and method are provided which will identify connections of users to a network for purposes of billing and diagnosing failures on the network.
The power of computing has been greatly expanded by the ability to network individual users with other digital devices located in the same or different facilities. In a typical local area or wide area network system, users are connected and disconnected from the network on an ongoing basis. The network topology therefore changes, so that it becomes increasingly more difficult to identify the users of a network and their particular port connection to the network. In order to effectively diagnose problems on the network, as well as provide appropriate billing to users of the network, it is necessary to know, on at least a monthly basis, user port connections.
Network trouble shooting is typically done by the technician employees of the network owner. When diagnosing problems on the network, a networking problem may be traced to a particular physical address of a device connected to the network. The identification of the user of the equipment having to the physical address involved in a network problem, however, is not immediately available. Locating a network port location of a particular user is even more difficult in an environment where users may move from office to office, or even building to building over time, so that connectivity information is constantly changing. Further, various sources of user information are often in different data bases, and not correlated to a user""s network port connection. For instance, in a typical wide area network configuration, separate data bases may be maintained, one which identifies an employee""s organizational information, i.e., department number, telephone number, and employee number, etc., and other data bases which may include authorization data and address information for the users, which are not linked to each other, making it difficult to learn all facts about a user""s connection to the network.
Accordingly, the present invention seeks to merge user connectivity data which is dynamic, in that it changes from day to day, with more static data located in various data bases which are maintained by the network manager.
The invention is directed to a system and method which collects dynamic connectivity data from an area network interconnecting multiple computing devices. The dynamic connectivity information is combined in a data warehouse with static network information, relating to the various users and their privileges. The combined data stored in a data warehouse permits the identification of each user and the various privileges of the user, correlated to its connection port.
The productivity data is collected using commands in the simple network management protocol (SNMP). SNMP commands query all network devices such as hubs, routers, and gateways to other networks to obtain port connectivity information such as the identity of the ports being used by each network user.
The dynamic connectivity data may be combined in a single data warehouse with static user information from other data bases, correlated to the collected dynamic information. Thus, every user of the system may be identified along with ports in use by the user, and any privileges which exist for the user to use other connected devices such as gateways to other networks.